


Homecoming

by unfolded73



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Henry/OC - Freeform, Kid Fic, Maureen Swan-Jones, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-31
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-10-13 06:52:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10508559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unfolded73/pseuds/unfolded73
Summary: Henry’s never told an outsider about Storybrooke before, but with Ava he decides to take the plunge.





	1. Chapter 1

It took three months of dating Henry Mills before Ava started to realize that when Henry said his hometown was quirky, he didn’t just mean _quirky_. The fact that it took her so long to figure out that something was very different about his upbringing didn’t bode well for her career aspirations as an investigative journalist, she feared.

_“You’ll think I’m crazy. You’ll think you need to call the men in white coats to come haul me away,” he’d said as they lazed together in her bed one morning._

_“I already think you’re crazy, Henry. How much worse could it be?”_

It took getting him drunk before some of the specifics started to leak out of his mouth as he curled into her on her thrift-store sofa, his cheeks flushed pink and his mouth over-eager on her neck.

_“So tell me one thing about your family that you think I won’t believe,” she’d giggled, squirming away from him._

_“My grandma is Snow White. My stepdad is Captain Hook.”_

_She’d blinked at him for several endless seconds._

_“That’s two things,” she’d finally said._

It was about twelve hours after that that he Skype’d his mother.

“I’m calling my biological mom. Emma. I could call my adoptive mom, but she’d be grouchier about it. Trust me, when you meet Regina, you don’t want it to be under these circumstances.” The computer bleep-bleeped in the background over his explanation.

When the call was answered, all they saw at first was tiny, chubby hand and a mop of brown curls. “Henry!” The child climbed up onto the chair, and the round face of what was presumably his baby sister appeared, filling the screen.

“Maureen, go get Mommy,” he said patiently.

“I got a ice cream. Daddy got me it.” Sure enough, the remains of a chocolate treat could be seen smeared on her face.

“Cute kid,” Ava commented.

“Go get mommy,” Henry repeated. The strain of the last day, of letting down his walls and telling her his secrets, was showing on his face.

“Mommy!’ The child shouted, swinging her head around to the doorway of what looked like a comfortable office, from what Ava could see. “Henry’s on the compooter!”

An attractive blonde woman appeared in the frame, slightly out of breath as she picked up the child and sat down with her safely contained on her lap. “Oh, she’s answering Skype now, fantastic,” she muttered. “She’ll be hacking the Pentagon next. Hey, Henry.”

“Hey,” He glanced nervously over at Ava, where she was standing far enough away that the camera wasn’t picking her up, and then back at his mom. “Do you remember me mentioning Ava?”

“Sure, of course I do; how’s that going?” Emma’s face broke out in a smile, and she really was gorgeous, Ava thought. Her own mother was almost twenty years older than this woman; it was weird to think this was Henry’s mother.

“Um, well, I told her some stuff. About our family.” He glanced at her again. “So either it’s going great or she’s about to dump me.”

“Oh. Wow.” Ava could see the child, Maureen, bouncing as her mother’s knee jiggled up and down.

“So…” He turned and gestured to Ava. “Come here and meet my mom.”

She walked over to the laptop hesitantly and sat next to Henry on the bed. “Hi, Mrs….” and felt like kicking herself because she couldn’t remember his biological mother’s name.

“It’s Ms. Swan; I didn’t change my name when I got married, but everyone in this town calls me Mrs. Jones anyway,” she said with a smiling eye roll. “So I’ll answer to either. But just call me Emma.”

“Okay, Emma.”

“So you’re probably wondering if Henry is crazy; I thought that myself when he showed up on my doorstep twelve years ago and told me fairy tales were real.”

“I didn’t lead with that,” Henry said.

“He’s not crazy. Whatever he’s told you, it’s true,” Emma said.

“He told me your husband is Captain Hook,” she said, shaking her head slightly. He’d told her a lot of things; they’d talked well into the night, and the lack of sleep was making her feel surreal and floaty. Just now, she felt like she could believe almost anything.

Emma sighed. “Yeah, and that’s just for starters.”

“Daddy has a big ship,” Maureen interjected, her arms flung out wide. “with a thousand hundred sails.”

“Not quite that many, sweet pea,” Emma said.

“I thought maybe you could demonstrate your magic,” Henry said quickly. “Just, I know that’s a weird thing to ask–”

“It’s fine, but are you sure?” _Can we trust her? Is she worth these secrets? Have you let someone in too soon?_ Ava could see all these thoughts and more flicker across Henry’s mother’s face.

“I’m sure,” he said.

Emma held a hand out, palm up, and suddenly a book appeared in it, seemingly from nowhere. She set the book down and held her hand up again. This time, a spyglass appeared, which she also set down. “Killian’s going to wonder where his stuff went,” she said with a small laugh.

“It… it could be a trick. Like, some kind of video trick,” Ava murmured.

Emma snorted. “As if I know how to do that. Look, I’d zap something to you in Boston if I could, but I’m nowhere near that strong. But you’re welcome to visit us here anytime. If Henry thought you were worthy of letting in on all this, then you’re worthy of coming up to Maine with him to see for yourself.” She turned a wide smile on her son. _Gotcha_ , it seemed to say.

~*~

It was another month before Ava saw Storybrooke for herself.

Henry pulled the car up in front of a place called Granny’s Diner. Ava could make out the storefronts of several quaint, downtown shops, the sort you’d expect to find in a seaside town in Maine. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. “We aren’t going to your house?”

He took a deep breath, his hands still on the steering wheel. “I think I need to ease into it. Is that okay? We can get lunch, or… whatever you want.”

Ava still wasn’t sure what she believed. It was possible that her boyfriend and his family were some kind of con artists, or delusional. She was currently existing in this liminal space between belief and nonbelief: when she was in Henry’s sphere, when he talked to her about his childhood, she believed him. But when she was alone, it was like waking up from a dream and realizing that while you were asleep, a series of ridiculous occurrences had seemed believable.

The diner was pleasingly retro, she thought as she slid into a red vinyl booth across from Henry. “Don’t order the special,” he said with a nod at the board. “The grilled cheese is good, and hamburgers are usually safe.”

“Usually?” she asked, squinting up at the menu.

“Henry, is that you?” An older lady came dashing out from behind the counter and pulled Henry into a hug before he could quite stand up.

“Hey, Granny. Surely I haven’t been gone so long that you forgot what I look like.”

She let go of him and smacked his arm with a dish towel. “You’ve been gone plenty long. And did you get taller again?”

He chuckled. “I don’t think so. Granny, this is Ava.”

Ava held out her hand. “Ava Gutierrez. So you’re Henry’s grandmother?”

Granny and Henry both laughed. “No, she’s just Granny to everyone,” he said.

“Ava was Henry’s great grandmother’s name,” Granny said with a warm smile for her. “Did you tell her that?”

“I’ve told her more than she wanted to hear,” Henry said with a sad little smirk.

Granny narrowed her eyes, and then smacked Henry with her dish towel again. “If you mean what I think you mean, then give the girl some time to adjust. Don’t you remember how hard it was for Emma when she came here? You had to almost die for her to believe.”

After that rather remarkable statement, Granny took their orders, which Ava gave in a daze, hardly noticing what she was ordering. “You almost died?”

“Kind of. It was a sleeping curse,” he said.

“A sleeping curse,” Ava said flatly.

Henry heaved a sigh. “Yeah. Look–” Whatever he was about to say, the buzzing of his phone in his pocket interrupted it. “Hang on.” He swiped the screen. “Hey mom, I’m here.”

Ava wondered which mother he was talking to – he didn’t always make it clear in conversation, and he called them both ‘Mom’.

“I thought everyone was converging at Mom and Killian’s house for dinner,” he said. So that would make this Regina he was talking to, Ava reasoned. “Maybe, we’ll see how it goes.” His eyes met Ava’s for a second before he looked out the window. “It’s…complicated right now… Yeah… I’ll see you at dinner… I love you.” He ended the call.

Ava felt her shoulders tensing up, an ache from the drive burning between them. “Sorry I’m so _complicated_ ”

“No,” he said, and his eyes pleaded with her to understand. “ _I’ve_ made things complicated. I’m sorry for springing all this on you and just expecting you to believe it.” He looked down at his lap for a long moment. “I never told anyone in college. _No one_. Not my roommates, not girlfriends. I just…” He took a shaky breath and let it out. “I don’t know why, but I felt like I could tell you, and it was too much, and I’m _so sorry_ for that–”

“Hey.” She reached out and put her hand over his. “It’s a lot, but I’ll deal with it. Okay?”

He met her gaze, his eyes brimming with hope. “Okay.”

Ava plucked absently at the packets of sugar and Splenda on the table. “So Granny, like Red Riding Hood and the wolf?”

His resulting laugh was watery. “Yeah, basically.”

“So where’s Red Riding Hood?”

“She fell in love with Dorothy Gale, and I’m pretty sure they’re still in Oz.”

Ava blinked at him. “Right.”

~*~

She found herself pulled into a warm hug by Emma as soon as they were through the door, setting their luggage in the foyer. “You have a lovely home,” Ava said automatically.

“Thanks.” Emma looked down at the bags and waved her hand, making them disappear. “I put the bags upstairs,” she explained.

“Wow,” Ava said. Any remaining doubts that Henry’s mother had some kind of magical powers evaporated.

“Stop showing off,” Henry said.

“I thought you wanted me to show off.” She gestured to the kitchen. “Do you guys want something to eat?”

“We stopped at Granny’s, we’re good.” Henry walked over and and sank down onto a sofa, so Ava sat down beside him.

“Mommy!” Maureen barrelled into the room and collided with Emma’s knees. “Henry’s here!” she announced unnecessarily.

“I see that, Mo.” Emma steered her over to the two of them. “And he brought his friend Ava. Can you say hi?”

Maureen looked distrustfully at her. If what Henry said about Storybrooke was true, she probably wasn’t used to meeting new people. “Hi,” she said in a much softer voice.

Ava didn’t consider herself particularly good with kids, but this little girl was pretty enchanting. “Nice to meet you, Maureen.”

“Does Henry make you storybooks?” Maureen asked.

Ava glanced at Henry, questioning him with her eyes. “No, he doesn’t make me storybooks.”

Maureen puffed up, looking smug. “He made me a lot. I have one about Queen Elsa. Do you want to see it?”

“Sure.”

Maureen grinned and darted off.

“You make her storybooks? That’s sweet.”

“Actually, it’s… “ He sighed heavily again. He’d been doing a lot of that, and Ava wondered if he regretted bringing her here. Bringing her into his life. “I’m gonna use the bathroom. Back in a sec.” He went upstairs, following in his little sister’s footsteps at a more sedate pace.

“He’s nervous,” Emma said, flopping down onto the chair across from her. “He likes you a lot, and he’s terrified of messing it up. He’s afraid he’s already messed it up.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Emma smiled. “Would you like a drink? You look like you could use a drink.”

Ava laughed nervously. “Would I be making a terrible impression on you as Henry’s mom if I said yes, I could desperately use a drink?”

“Not at all. Whiskey okay? Or I could open some wine?”

“Whiskey’s perfect.” Emma got up and headed back to the kitchen.

Maureen came thumping down the stairs, putting both feet on each step in quick succession. She had one hand gripping the banister and a big book in the other. She trotted over and proudly presented it to Ava.

Ava had been expecting something stapled together, or maybe if Henry was particularly industrious, three-hole punched. What she was being presented with by this precocious three-year-old was a real book, serious and leather-bound. Ava took it reverently and opened it.

“This is… incredible,” she murmured, flipping the pages. This wasn’t just a brief retelling of _Frozen_ , the movie. These were complicated stories about Elsa and Anna and other characters she’d never heard of. The stories were long and the illustrations were _amazing_.

Emma put a glass of amber liquid in her hand. “Sounds like Henry’s got more to tell you about.”

“Mom, you put Ava’s stuff in the guest room,” Henry said as he rejoined them.

“Yeah?”

Henry rolled his eyes. “Really?”

Emma shrugged. “I didn’t want to make any assumptions, but you guys can sleep where you want. Don’t let anyone accuse me of not being the cool mom. Letting my son fornicate under my roof.”

Ava blushed and struggled not to choke on her drink.

“Mommy, what’s forcate?” Maureen asked.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to @j-philly-b for the beta and the idea of adding an embarrassing Henry story!

“Daddy!”

A small elbow poked her in the boob, and Ava winced as Maureen climbed off of her lap and ran to the man who’d just come through the front door. She set aside the book they’d been looking at together, picked up her drink, and turned to take in Henry’s stepfather.

“Hey there,” he greeted his daughter. He reached down and scooped her up, propping her against his hip with practiced ease, his left arm under her bottom and his hand spanning across her back. Ava’s eyes were drawn to the shiny metal of the hook he had in place of a left hand.

The little girl put her arms around her father’s neck. “Ava read my Elsa book to me,” she announced.

“Did she?” The skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled as he smiled, taking away from the dangerous look he seemed to otherwise have going for him, with the leather jacket and black clothes and eyeliner. And the hook. He carried Maureen back over to the sitting room, depositing her on the sofa. 

“Nice to meet you, I’m Killian,” he said, holding his hand out for her to shake. 

“Ava,” she responded. “Your daughter’s quite the charmer.”

“Don’t I know it,” he said. “Henry, how are you?” The two men hugged, the kind of back-slapping hug that men considered acceptable, but she could see the affection they had for each other. “How’s Boston?”

“Good, it’s good.”

Killian looked hard at Henry, then at Ava, then at Henry again, but before he could say anything else the front door opened and there was a flurry of activity. Ava stood up, nervous about who else she might be about to meet.

A dramatic-looking dark-haired woman swept in first, and Ava watched as a pie she was levitating rather than carrying was swept into the kitchen and deposited on the counter by magic. No one else seemed to find this the least bit remarkable. Ava swallowed the rest of her drink, squeezing her eyes shut against the burn.

Immediately on this dramatic woman’s dramatic heels followed a short woman with a pixie haircut, a sandy-haired guy, and a boy staring so intently at a Nintendo that he collided with his mother’s back when she stopped to hug Emma.

“Henry, my boy, you should probably make the introductions,” Killian said, prodding him with his hook.

“Um, yeah. Everybody, this is Ava. Ava, this is Regina, my mom, Snow and David, my grandparents, and Neal, who despite being ten is actually my uncle.”

 _Grandparents_ , she thought, looking at the couple who looked no older than Emma and Killian did. Henry had explained about the curse, but she’d sort of ignored that part, her brain triaging the information as best it could. Now here was more proof that if these people were really Emma’s parents, there was some kind of magic involved. Her brain whirling, she shook hands and said whatever pleasantries seemed appropriate. 

Maureen immediately attached herself to Neal, following him to another part of the house. Ava could still hear Maureen’s constant stream of chatter long after they’d left the room.

Regina gave Henry a hug and a kiss on the forehead, and then started to give Ava a skeptical once-over that brought to mind Henry’s characterization of her fairy tale alter ego as the Evil Queen. Ava wasn’t the only one who noticed the scrutiny.

“Come on, Regina, you’re scaring the lass,” Killian said, stepping in between them. “I got some of that Zinfandel you like; would you like a glass?”

Regina grumbled something to Killian that Ava couldn’t hear, but allowed herself to be led into the kitchen, and Ava let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. 

“Do you want a refill?” Henry asked, taking her glass.

“Sure.”

“It’s lovely to meet you, Ava,” Snow said, and the warm smile that enveloped her face instantly made Ava’s shoulders relax. “Henry tells us you started working at the newspaper at the same time?”

“Yeah, we met in one of those interminable orientation meetings they subject you to.” _Snow White_ , she thought, slightly hysterically. _I’m talking to the real Snow White._ Because if she was going to accept that the people in this town had access to some kind of magical powers, and she’d seen that with her own eyes, why not just accept the rest of it? 

Henry returned with her glass and stood beside her, and she suddenly felt so comforted by his presence, so awed that he had trusted her enough to bring her into the close circle of his very unusual family like this. 

“I’m glad you came,” Snow was continuing. “I’m sure Storybrooke may seem strange, and we all must seem… it must be hard to believe all of it.”

“Well, I’ve seen both of Henry’s moms doing magic, and apparently Henry has a magical pen he never told me about,” she said with a gentle elbow to his ribs, “so--” A streak of darkness in the sky outside the window caught her eye. “So what the hell was that?” Ava pointed. It certainly hadn't looked like a bird.

Henry went over to the window to look. “Mal’s behaving herself?”

Killian chuckled. “For the most part. Of course, every time a pet or head of livestock goes missing, she or her daughter gets blamed for it.”

“Mal?” Ava asked.

“Maleficent. She’s a dragon sometimes,” he explained.

Ava took another sip of whiskey. “Of course she is.”

“Killian, could you and Henry go get the folding table and extra chairs from the basement?” Emma called. “We’ve got nine people.”

The next few minutes were a flurry of preparations for dinner, as covered dishes brought by the guests were warmed up and Henry’s stepfather put together a salad. Ava kept out of the way, standing by the window, watching a dragon cut figure eights through the sky.

~*~

“And then he proceeded to knock over a mailbox with my truck,” David said.

“You did?” Ava asked, elbowing Henry in the ribs as he flushed at the friendly laughter around the table.

“It was my first driving lesson, and I was barely tall enough to reach the pedals and see over the steering wheel,” Henry replied. “Granddad just thought I was spending too much time taking sailing lessons from the local pirate, that’s all. He was jealous.” 

David took the laughter at his expense in stride, rolling his eyes. “I could just see the writing on the wall, that I was gonna be stuck with this guy at family holidays for the rest of my life.” He punched Killian good-naturedly in the arm.

“And then it all came full circle when I helped to teach Killian to drive and he almost took out the same mailbox,” Henry said.

“Yeah, I took over the driving lessons after that,” Emma commented, leaning over and kissing her husband on the cheek.

“Will you marry Henry?” Maureen whispered loudly in Ava’s ear. 

“Mo, sit down please,” Killian called from the other end of the table. The child quickly plopped back down in her seat, but she kept her eyes trained on Ava, expecting an answer. Around them, the buzz of dinner table conversation carried on.

Ava blinked and set her wine glass down, wondering what the protocol was for carrying on a conversation with a preschooler while drunk. Because she was definitely well on her way to drunk.

“I haven’t known Henry long enough to think about marrying him,” Ava whispered back, aware that the man himself was sitting on her other side and possibly listening with one ear while he laughed at another one of his grandfather’s stories.

“Daddy says when you have a True Love, you get married.” 

“You should probably eat some more of your beans,” Ava said, pointing to Maureen’s plate. One of the adults had painstakingly put a little bit of each food on the dish, far enough apart that none of the foods touched.

“I don’t like beans. And then after you get married, you have a baby,” she continued, undeterred. “Mommy said she doesn’t want more babies, so I can’t have a sister.”

Ava smirked. “Sorry about that, kid. I didn’t have any sisters either.”

“But if you make a baby with Henry, that would be almost as good.”

Taking a drink of her wine, Ava shuddered. “Don’t hold your breath, okay?”

“Maureen, if you don’t eat your beans, you won’t get any of my apple pie. Ava, are you from Boston originally?” Regina asked from across the table. Ava wasn’t sure if Regina’s intent was to rescue her from Maureen’s attempts to plan out the rest of her life, but she appreciated it all the same. Maureen put a single bean in her mouth and made a face.

“No, I grew up in Brooklyn, actually.”

“Oh, Emma and Henry lived a year in New York,” Snow piped up. “How old were you then Henry, eleven? Twelve?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“You could have run into each other and never known it,” Snow said with a dreamy look in her eyes.

“It’s a big city, Grandma.”

“Well, if you were in Manhattan around that time and saw a guy wandering the city in full pirate regalia, it was this guy,” Emma said, pointing a thumb at her husband.

“Aye, rescuing you from a curse and an ill-fated engagement to a flying monkey.”

“I didn’t say yes to the proposal, Killian.”

“No, but you were thinking about it.”

It sounded like well-worn banter, and everyone around the table had the look of people who’d heard it a hundred times before. “Flying monkey?” Ava asked. “I assume that’s not just a figure of speech?”

“My sister is the Wicked Witch of the West,” Regina clarified. 

These proclamations weren’t even startling anymore. “Got it,” Ava said, and started to giggle. She clapped a hand over her own mouth to stop the laughter from bubbling out further, but the more she tried not to laugh, the more the laughter seemed to want to overtake her. “Sorry, it’s just…” Ava dabbed at the tears that had sprung up in her eyes, trying not to smudge her mascara. “This place is bonkers.”

“You’re dealing with it way better than I did,” Emma said, standing up and starting to clear plates from the table. Killian intercepted her hand as she reached for his plate and kissed the back of it before moving to help her. 

“She’s probably not as infuriatingly stubborn as you are, Emma,” Regina commented.

“Oh, I don’t know about that. She’s pretty stubborn.” Henry squeezed her hand under the table.

~*~

Henry found her later in the room Killian called “the study,” a warmly lit room paneled in dark wood and lined with bookcases. Ava sipped from a glass of water, perusing the spines of the books, as Henry stole up behind her and kissed the back of her neck.

“Hey,” he said, his eyes both hopeful and wary. “You okay?”

She held up the water. “Figured I’d better stop drinking alcohol before I did something even more embarrassing.”

“As long as you don’t try to jump my stepfather, we’re good,” Henry said. At her raised eyebrows, he added. “He came to pick me up from college alone a couple of times, and some of my friends were… not subtle.”

She grimaced. “I mean, he’s good looking, but not really my type.”

Henry smirked at her. “No? What’s your type?”

Ava set her water down on a table and put her arms around him. “I don’t know… I guess I’d say the bookish intellectual type? Likes scarves, wears glasses, has a secret fairy tale family that no one knows about? Ring any bells?”

“It sounds like you want to date Harry Potter.”

She made like she was pulling away from him. “Is he real too? Do you think he’s on Tinder?”

He grinned and pulled her back against his chest. “He’s not real, but I can think of maybe one guy I could set you up with who fits that description.” She stretched up and kissed him briefly on the lips before dropping back down to her heels. “Everyone loves you,” he said. “Thanks for coming here with me, I know it’s…”

She looked up into his familiar face. “Your family is nice. I don’t really even care who they are. All that matters is that they love you and they love each other. The rest of it is… okay, mind-numbingly weird, but it sort of doesn’t matter, you know?” She kissed him again, and then stepped back to put some space between them. “Your little sister already has plans for us getting married and having babies together, by the way.”

He laughed. “That figures. Another budding romantic, just like my grandmother.”

“Living in a town full of fairy tale characters will probably do that to a person.”

“Or it could just make them horribly jaded, with no hope of ever living up to the epic love stories of their forebearers. Destined to always be the one to document the dramatic romances, but never to live them.” He scratched at his cheek. “Just for example.”

“I don’t know, if epic love stories automatically come with sleeping curses and dying and rescuing your significant other from Hell and all that, I might just take a pass. Boring, everyday stories are more my speed.”

Henry’s resulting grin lit up his face. “Mine too.”


End file.
